Simple Summer Dinner

A new favorite: Salt and Pepper Shrimp

Romanesco Broccoli with Mushroom Wine Sauce. If you aren't familiar with Romanesco Broccoli, check out this great pic by another blogger.

...but I was warn'd by my Experience to eat sparingly of them, remembring, that when I was ashore in Barbary, the eating of Grapes kill'd several of our English Men who were Slaves there, by throwing them into Fluxes and Fevers. -Defoe, Robinson Crusoe


Sure, champagne grapes are elegant in all their tiny glory, but I find them to be difficult to eat. I cherish any number of other difficult foods-- artichokes, for instance. However, lacking the patience to nibble my way through a bunch of champagne grapes, I frequently find myself harvesting batches of the juicy wee grapes into the blender and whirling them into a fruity beverage. The results always delight me, though I feel like I'm commiting a sacrilege of some sort.

Don't you wish your maters were mauve like these?

Don tchoo?

The parson of F-field no longer threw his oyster-shell into the street, ambitiously luxurious! but supped in his garden upon codlins and cream, or a bit of soft cheese and a cucumber. - Graves, The Spiritual Quixote (1773)


We're supping at home again, after a week of mostly dining out. You scarcely can glimpse the layer of shaved cucumber at the bottom of these salads in waiting. The soft cheese, garden-fresh basil, and tomatoes, on the other hand, are all representin'.

Perhaps I might the garden's glories sing,
The double roses of the Pæstan spring;
How endive drinks the rill, and how are seen
Moist banks with celery forever green;
How, twisted in the matted herbage, lies
The bellowing cucumber's enormous size...
-William Hamilton (1704-1754), The Corycian Swain (from Georgics IV, Line 116)


We lugged a bundle of celery to Bayfield and back-- eating only a few stalks either raw or in tuna salad. Unwilling to let the well-traveled celery get the best of me, I made it into a chilled soup. Read my pedantic harangue on the lovely recipe here (I'm squireallworthy in Madison, WI, USA, of course).

The pomegranate sorbet I've been dying to try-- just pomegranate juice and maple syrup-- was tasty but unseemly. The dish needs something to bind it together. Lemon juice (with its natural pectin) will probably do. A picture will have to wait until I make an updated batch... In the meantime, pomegrante juice will figure prominently in my new Viking-blender lifestyle: the smoothie at long last has returned to my daily fare.

What he said.

She won't be president of your wonderful society of philanthropy, even if you asked her to be, as you should have asked her to be

Kenneth Burns: "Bill Clinton is our Eva Peron."

Life's Rich Pageant II

I discovered a new interest in cooking Mexican cuisine and a love for Diana Kennedy when, after making Victoria Wise's (read my review of her Vegetarian Table: Mexico) empanadas for a Cinco de Mayo party, I impulsively bought a poblano pepper plant with the intention of making homegrown chiles rellenos. My plant produced exactly 4 peppers, and... mission accomplished!



For tonight, I also made squash blossom quesadillas and arroz verde. Both are instant favorites. I'm delighted to have a simple recipe for the squash blossoms which always call to me at the market.

Content with little, I can piddle here/ With Broccoli and Mutton, round the year

I place broccoli as pizza topping in the column of strikes against NYC. I encounter broccoli on pizza most frequently in NYC and crankily imagine that haggard New Yorkers consider it to be the healthy option when scarfing down a coupla slices at one of the city's innumerable mediocre pizzerias. This may be neither fair nor rational; so be it.

I am, however, pleased with the pizza I topped last night with peppery ricotta cheese, garlic, and broccoli greens. The greens come from the farmer who rocked my summer with her amazing sorrel. Sadly, I won't have a chance to inquire more about them (or acquire more of them) because I will miss this Saturday's market. So, I'm not sure if there was anything particularly special about these broccoli greens. I do know that most broccoli greens never make it to market: people don't realize how delectable they are and most farmers feed them to cattle, etc.



I used Hazan's very simple pizza dough recipe, which worked wonderfully. Bradford recommends the Chez Panisse recipe, or simply their technique of beginning the dough with a sponge of rye flour in order to infuse the crust with nuttiness. With a new baking stone in the house, I'm more than game.


I topped a second pizza with caramelized onions, anchovies, and dollops of goat cheese. This is Kenneth's favorite.



I didn't go for a true pissaladière and add olives, because olives appeared in last night's salad, as did yellow doll watermelon, mint, and red onions in a lime vinaigrette. This salad is best with cubes of salty feta, but I thought we were having enough cheese for the evening.



For dessert, we had blueberry sorbet, which disappointed us a little. I'm without a proper blender just now, and the food processor didn't adequately pulverize the blueberry skins. Also, I was just sad that I hadn't opted for blueberry ice cream instead of sorbet. Sampling it again this afternoon, though, I think it may not be half bad...

A Good Word or Two

"What is elegance? Soap and water!"
-Cecil Beaton

"...and does propriety change with meridians?"
-Lady Olivia in Leonora (1806) by Maria Edgeworth

By these means he not only spent his mornings in useful exercise, but supplied himself with money for what the French call the menus plaisirs, during the whole summer.

Packed Lunch for Friday @ Madison Hostel:

-Organic peanut butter and wild arctic forest jam sandwich
-Cucumber and homegrown tomato salad

-Donita plantain chips

Packed Dinner for Friday @ Madison Hostel:

-Salad of arugula, smoked trout, and shaved fennel dressed with red currant vinaigrette
-Cold soup of leeks, sorrel, and peas
-Half a La Brea demi-baguette with chevre

Saturday Breakfast @ the market:

-Apple Cinnamon Croissant
-Pain au Chocolat (both from L'Etoile's Café Soleil)

Saturday's Lazy Lunch @ home:
-Warm raw honey, hazlenuts, and chevre with half a La Brea demi-baguette
-Cold soup of leeks, sorrel, and peas
-Blueberries

Saturday's Dinner on the lush deck garden of Clara and Alex:
(I provided only a bunch of flowers)
-Vegetarian salad niçoise (w/ white beans in lieu of tuna)
-Vegetarian pissaladière with chevre and feta on the side
-Salad of potatoes and fresh string beans dressed with mustard viniagrette
-Blueberry pie with whipped cream

Sunday Bruch @ Original Pancake House:
-Dutch Delight (Dutch Baby with bananas and strawberries and served with housemade strawberry syrup)

Packed Dinner for Sunday @ Madison Hostel
-Farfalle with beet greens, currants, and chevre
-Salmon salad with roasted potatoes and homegrown basil, dill, and tarragon

Apologies...

...for dead air on Siege of Derry. Kenneth took the new camera on his trip to Maine, leaving me with the old clunker: I have photos to post, but they're locked out of reach on a floppy as we're so technical that we no longer have a floppy drive. I also have a couple of things to scan, but our antiquated scanner-- the lightest piece of equipment in the world, like a feather enclosed in a piece of plastic-- died. Oh to be a feather enclosed in a piece of plastic.

Who, from the tumps with bright green mosses clad,
Plucks the wood sorrel, with its light thin leaves,
Heart-shaped, and triply folded; and its root
Creeping like beaded coral...



All summer long, I've purchased sorrel from a farmer who repeatedly thanks me for appreciating her labor of love. It's really all my pleasure. Sorrel is so mysterious-- a green not bitter but rather quilted with a citrus-y flavor as intense as the seasoning on a dorito. But, of course, all natural.



Tonight I served a rough chiffonade of sorrel with roasted beets, fried goat cheese, and a creamy balsamic vinaigrette. The salad needs a little fine tuning (I want a softer, tangier chevre, maybe the cheese should be peppered before it's fried, etc.), but I'm sold on this combination of flavors, colors, and textures.